In a landscape where major photography events often remain concentrated in big cities, Biennale de photographie Xavier Miserachs champions a different idea of the festival: a human-scale event capable of bringing local memory into dialogue with present-day issues.
This edition begins with a journey into history with « Dorothea Lange, un long voyage ». The exhibition devoted to the great American documentary photographer looks back at her work carried out in the 1930s and 1940s for the Farm Security Administration (FSA), as she documented the living conditions of farm households hit by the Great Depression. Among the images on view is her now-iconic portrait of Florence Thompson and her children, one of her most emblematic photographs.
Another highlight is « Sergio Larrain. Le vagabond de Valparaíso », the first retrospective of the Chilean photographer in Catalonia. Produced by Magnum Photos and organized with the Fundació Foto Colectania, it recalls the importance of a singular artist, capable of transforming the street into an inner landscape. From Valparaíso to Europe, Larrain developed a photography in which poetry never erases reality.
The Biennale also continues its work of rediscovery with an exhibition devoted to Gabriel Cualladó, a key figure of the postwar renewal of Spanish photography. His portraits and street scenes reveal a quiet modernity, attentive to ordinary gestures and anonymous presences.
The program also has a taste for unexpected correspondences: « Décrire le temps, Txema Salvans – Josep Pla » brings the photographer and the writer together around a shared approach: two ways of understanding how a place can become an artistic material.
This attention to the local also runs through « Les Casanovas. Une lignée de photographes », where the Biennale unearths family archives to tell a century of Palafrugell’s history through the images of this dynasty, begun with Lluís Casanovas Marquès (1857-1936). A work of memory that reminds us forgotten albums belong to photography too.
The program also looks toward the new generation with « Travailleurs de la mer » by Carles Palacio, devoted to the fishermen of the Costa Brava and the fragility of a threatened trade; « Le paysage invisible » by Wayra Ficapal, which observes the Ebro delta in the face of environmental upheaval, or also « Osses » by Vero Mora Noya, a tribute to women caregivers whose roles sometimes end up reversing.
World events are not absent either, notably with « Le local est global», a selection from the Collection Art Banc Sabadell. Fotografia Documental, which brings together photographers such as Samuel Aranda, Toni Arnau, Lorenzo Meloni, Santi Palacios, Edu Ponces and Anna Surinyach around major contemporary tensions — climate, migration, political and social crises. Added to this are screenings and a talk by philosopher Xavier Antich.
Perhaps the strength of this Biennale lies precisely there: remaining a precious event in a Mediterranean village, because it helps create a place of circulation and encounters.
Jean-Jacques Ader
XIV Biennal de Fotografia Xavier Miserachs, in Palafrugell (Baix Empordà, Girona) 11 exhibitions, August 2 – October 18, 2026 – Info: https://biennalxmiserachs.org/
